ashbury

http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/D9hvmI-kk08/mqdefault.jpg

An ignorant answer from another non-athlete: arm strength has been the knock on Polanco for as long as I remember, including comments from Twins personnel, so I would presume he's worked with whatever experts there are, already. The lack of zip on his throws when he guides it to first, or the scattershot results if he really tries to bring it, is not a sudden revelation.

Having both Dozier and Polanco on the same team is a sub-optimal use of their talents, as they belong both at 2B and putting one at SS or 3B diminishes his contribution. The question for me is whether trading either one brings back enough to exceed the suboptimal combination. (SydneyTwinsFan among others also expressed this point of view.) Therefore, before making any other decisions, I would shop both Dozier and Polanco hard. I want to know concretely the return either player would bring. Tactically, I think letting it be known both are being shopped will slightly increase the offers for the one who other GMs want more, probably Dozier - "I don't especially want Polanco, but if I lowball on Dozier, the Twins might accept an offer on Polanco from someone else, and then Dozier won't be traded". Dozier is at an age that he'd be the natural one to trade, if your business model is to exploit your minor league talent pipeline. We may look back and realize 2016 was his career year. On the other hand, if he's achieved a new level of performance, it's enough above average that he's the kind of player you want to retain. There is also the public relations problem with trading your best player, something that can not be ignored. So I want a lot in return for him, if I trade him - high upside starting pitching, to start with. The point of putting together a contending team is to fill all your positions with above MLB-average players. Those don't grow on trees. We finally have one. Polanco, as has been stated by others already, is less likely to bring back much in trade right now. If that assumption proves wrong, he's the one I probably deal. He projects as an above average 2B eventually, so I don't let him go for scraps in return. If neither trade option works out, I would roll with Polanco at SS for 2017.* I have been a harsh critic of Polanco's arm for a couple of years now, and I remain very skeptical he can ever become even an average shortstop overall. But his bat looks like it's good enough to make up for it, during a transition season; and unlike some players, being in over his head on defense didn't seem to harm his offensive production. Keep the channels open for a trade during 2017, and re-evaluate a year from now if I still have both players. * An option I haven't seen discussed: move Dozier to SS instead of Polanco. Both players are about average at 2B; if Dozier might provide marginally better defense at SS then that change has to be considered. The old regime seemed to give undue preference to veterans in their choice of positions; maybe under Falvey that changes. I think Dozier sees himself as enough of a team player to accept the challenge of being a mediocre SS for the good of the team. It's something Molitor wouldn't have asked of Dozier mid-season, but perhaps now he would.

I'm hoping the new front office does a bit of culling among the glut of corner/DH types we have, preferably via trade rather than simply non-tender them. Minus a couple of those players, Vargas's role will become clear. He's either with some other team, or is part of the Twins lineup as a platoon bat at minimum. Plouffe gone, Vargas for a prospect in single-A, or Park for a prospect in single-A - I'm not sure I care which two of these happens.

This football star has a movie now? http://67.media.tumblr.com/f4ccd60df683d68c1657ac1f52fc8839/tumblr_n6ab8yu0Sx1td5zevo1_1280.png

Or constitutional scholars, I imagine.

As a result of the feedback, I'll change the layout a little. Her *campaign* should embrace this opportunity to position the election as the "change" election that a majority seems to want it to be. It may be true that Hillary herself should not lead the vanguard. But she should be on board with it (not just as a desirable outcome from long coat tails but something to be actively strived for) and adopt its general tone. There are plenty of surrogates on the campaign trail who can hit harder on the Contract With America theme. Elizabeth Warren certainly never seems to have a problem with asserting herself (then again she's not running for president). Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama can lay out the anti-gridlock platform in district after district, and see if they can't achieve something. "There's always another house election in two years" seems like a strong safety argument to voters who don't want Trump and don't want paralysis.

I don't disagree with your analysis, as it applies up to now; and I'm not going to claim that it already was incorporated in my comments when I wrote them. What I was saying ties in, though, in that perhaps the ground rules have dramatically changed in a way that lets her be a bit more free. It could be a once-in-a-term opportunity to really change the game, if she turns her sights not just to key races (which she certainly is now doing) but something more.

Assuming she goes on to a 6 point win or better, it better hit close to 100% at some point before the election or else there is something wrong with Nate's algorithms. A wek in advance, there is hardly scope for a new Black Swan event, and it will be down to sampling error, which his aggregation methods are meant to reduce to a percent or so.

I think she needs to get brave and campaign for the final month on a united government platform for the coming two years. Cook up some sort of Contract With America like in the 90s, with specifics for centrist legislation, and say that a vote for Republicans in congress this year is a vote for four more years of gridlock - "and if we don't come through, vote us out of congress again in two years. What (as The Donald might say) do you have to lose?" And she, for her part, has little to lose with this deal, as the Senate will flip back in 2018 anyway. Up to now her campaign has been sooooo cautious. It's been proved right, given her opponent. But now she maybe doesn't have an opponent. So she should be uber-optimistic and upbeat in her public persona, and aim for a really good tenure in the White House, which means getting stuff actually done. Which might actually keep the losses in 2018 to a minimum

Same general reaction here. I would have preferred more of a try at a Drop The Mic moment on her part, too. Something like "Donald, that's too many false accusations to try to rebut in two minutes. Let me just observe, that the first thing a dictator does is put his opponents in jail after a show trial. I don't think Americans want that deplorable kind of country." And then sit down, looking pleased with herself if she wants, and let him sputter that he's talking about Real Big Crimes and so forth. Yes, I said deplorable. I think it would be fine if she did a jujitsu move on their talking point, using this as a specific example, putting some visible distance in her view of the loud Trump minority versus the more moderate voters considering him. But the above works fine without that one word, if her team thinks she should not go there.

Moderator's note: this being in the Twins minor league forum, I'd like to proactively request that any revisiting of the Jepsen trade, if someone really feels the need, be taken somewhere else. / IOW - I was about to take the bait too, and caught myself

Then you are old enough to remember that the same situation, with the same rosy forecast for future times, was in force when we were still teens ourselves. The Freakonomics site unearthed a variation on the well-known saying mis-attributed to Churchill, namely by John Adams decades before: "A boy of 15 who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at 20.” Life expectancies and terminologies and civic participation were different then, one surmises. The principle behind the quote remains evergreen. Maybe I should take consolation in the fact this is just a baby boom cohort, going through their collective sclerotic phase of political life and swelling the ranks of the conservatives; it seems worse than it is and, as you say, it will pass. But it will take another 20 years, which will be tough to live through, with the constant risk of a big enough vote for candidates who promise to "bomb the sh*t out of them". Ths time, the Black Swan event we appear to have witnessed on Friday happened on the Republican side; next time, it may not.

Unfortunately, the lesson I fear that many will take from a coming debacle will be to blame the candidate and not the message he bore. "Nominate an upright person with the same platform and we would have won 2016 hands-down." The faction that brought Trump's rise will not go away quietly; they were already voting Republican, ever since Nixon's southern strategy really, and they will assert their own ownership of the party if the temperate ones try too hard. The result of such an attempt will be two half-parties (doesn't matter which one keeps the name Republican), with the more temperate one being the smaller. That won't be stable for more than another election cycle. / edit - I was still busy typing and wordsmithing when Levi posted his view. Maybe I should just delete my own post and click Like.

Since there seems an interest, please take it to a new thread.

You need to. The part you mentioned was the least of it; we already knew he's a serial cheater in his marriages. In the rest of it, he brags in part about serial sexual assault, AKA groping.

"That's nonsense. He didn't say any of those things."

http://giffiles.alphacoders.com/623/6231.gif

Small quibble: Plouffe is not a free agent, but is arbitration eligible and it could be in the team's interest to non-tender him. Same effect for your purposes. Hector Santiago is in roughly the same situation salary-wise.

Terrible. Terrific. What's a few letters, among friends?

He was a 20 year old, at high-A. To me, those numbers project just fine. If he can stick at SS, even more so.

I keep warning people who try to use Satire on this site: Don't. But they never listen. Including myself.

"˙uƃᴉǝɹoɟ ʞɐǝds I 'ssǝpɹɐʍǝʇs 'ɥO"

Going only by the web page for the show, it looks like they have a regular white guy with them, to make sure they don't try to marry each other or nothin'.